Animation

The primary motif in this silent picture is a grid that controls the shapes and motions of forms contained within the framework of a rotating cube. Constructed from interlocking cycles, the film explores branches and loops along paths laid down by geometric logic.

It is well known that the disposition of the images drawn by Escher are neither for animation nor for pre-animation; actually, quite the opposite. His images appear to be the carrying out of metamorphic dissolves. A bird gives way to the recognition of a house, which turns into fish, which turns into birds, and so on. Not a single flapping of wings takes place; everything is reiterated and fixed, becoming immersed in and re-emerging from a static continuum. All of Escher is an homage to one of the major animating forces of the cinema: the cross-dissolve. Precisely there, I found cinematic attitudes: in the house which turns into fish and in everything that transforms into something else. I gradually managed to figure out various types of non-existent sequences and then finally found myself dissolved, crossing over metamorphically. —P.G.

Lan Hua Hua is a Chinese animated short, originally released in 1989, and directed by Gen Li. This short is featured on the DVD that comes with the book 30 Years of Artistic Animation in China, written by Hong Chang and Yuzhong Xu.

The Visible Compendium constructs bits of unnamed meanings, fragments of light. Photography is, to me, not about things, but about light. Light is our primary reality when we are at the movies. Light which suggests things, the secondary reality, a construct by the mind.

A circus owner attempts to capture a mysterious Bunyip, but Dot and her bushland friends try to foil his plans. Dot soon discovers that the circus is merely a front for an international wildlife smuggling operation. Backed by her pals, Burra the Kookaburra and two boxing kangaroos, Dot goes on the warpath.